


Chose Wrong

by towards



Category: Tales of Symphonia
Genre: Angst, Gen, drabble prompts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-08
Updated: 2014-03-08
Packaged: 2018-01-15 01:31:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 6,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1286161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/towards/pseuds/towards
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was never meant to be Chosen.</p>
<p>A collection of drabbles from my AU RP blog chosewrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Unforgettable Memory

The Chosen of Mana must be kept healthy. Zelos eats nothing but the best of the best, is treated by the best doctors from all over, and lives his live without ever facing danger. Even his sparring lessons are kept light and gentle, with every bruise being treated as though it could be fatal.

The Chosen of Mana must be kept safe, locked within the gates of his own home. Outside, children play. Nobility stripped aside as they trounce through the muddy cobblestone in their Sunday best.

To disrespect the Chosen is to disrespect the Goddess herself. They stop and acknowledge him with a bow and move on, afraid to engage him in anything more than that. His fingers curl in the bars and he  _knows_  he can get out, but what would be the point? Mother would me angry at him for even considering disobeying her orders and his lesson has been learned from previous attempts.

And it’s a pain that has long since numbed. Zelos grows with a smile on his lips that twists into a cynical smirk before too long. He learns young that the type of play he’s restricted to is in the role he must take up when he ventures forth into society. He learns with blood on him as proof of his mistake. The cool, refined young man who will bring Tethe’alla from it’s darkest hour to it’s grace never shows weakness or doubt, turns all of it inward, because what does it matter in the end?

He meets her at a summit called by the king. Thirteen and nothing to show for it. They’re cool, professional - she treats him with respect and he accepts it with grace and dignity.

At least until it’s just the two of them. He turns to make the walk back home, one of the  _few_  walks he’s permitted to make on his own these days.

"Chosen One." Her voice is surprisingly strong for a girl so small. Zelos stops and glances over his shoulder, one red eyebrow cocked. "There’s something I want to talk to you about."

"Ah?" He turns to face her, gives a once over.

"Look, I… I…" The girl… What was her name? Sara? Sheylsa? Ah, whatever. She can’t look at him. Her eyes are anywhere but his. It wouldn’t be surprising if this was another admirer infatuated with his title. 

"You can stop right there. I think I know what you’re trying to say." He sighs, shaking his head.

"W-what?" Her eyes widen, a hand comes up in surprise. "So you know what I’m going to ask?"

"You’re not exactly being subtle about it… Listen, sorry, but I don’t like girls who make the first move. I’ve got to have  _standards_ , you know? What kind of man would I be if I just let myself get bulldozed?”

Her expression darkens. “Excuse me?”

"And not even being able to say it? I don’t mind a girl that knows what she wants, but she should at least be able to say it. I’m the Chosen One, after all. There isn’t a woman alive that wouldn’t want to date me."

Fury clouds her face. Her hands ball into fists. “That wasn’t-!”

"And cornering me alone is  _pretty_  creepy. I know, I’m sorry. It’s all my fault. I get that a lot. The pains of being beautiful, I guess. You’re a brave one, honey.”

He doesn’t see her hand coming. He doesn't even see her  _move_. Suddenly his face is stinging and she’s standing there, her anger quickly changing to horror as she realizes what she’s done. It’s a crime punishable by death to strike a Chosen. He’s surprised, even his instructors pull the punches - no one wants to harm him, no one wants to  _touch_  him.

"Chosen One, I’m - I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean…!" She’s quick to apologize.  "You were just being such a  _jerk_  that I… I mean, no, that’s not what I meant to say!”

He touches his stinging face. Despite himself, a smile seeps through the cracks. Something genuine, something untouched by cynicism or regret.

 

"There aren’t many people ballsy enough to strike the Chosen, you know. You must  _really_  want that date… Sorry. I’ve got somewhere to be today. But if there’s something else you want… That can probably be arranged.”

The incident goes unreported. It’s with his blessing that she has permission to enter the library to read up on the lost knowledge of summons. Her name is Sheena, from Mizuho, their hope at regaining some control over the spirits and saving some nearby villages from sinking into total destruction.

It doesn’t concern him.

The fact that she treats him like a person - doesn't let him get away with it, with disrespecting her, with laughing at her - does.


	2. Black Bird: Childhood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning for Suicide and Child Neglect.

When they argue, they argue in whispers. Quiet, under their breath - his mother’s sharp hands gesticulating wildly, his father’s strong jaw set and quiet fury abundant in his clenched fists. They argue without passion, as if they’re simply going through the motions - even at six, Zelos can tell that they feel nothing.

Not for each other.

And not for him.

It’s hard to describe. At six, he doesn’t have the words for it. He can’t say what is wrong in the Wilder household in clear terms. Their words may be sharp, but there is a line that is never crossed. Their hands may move, but they do not strike. Though unpleasant, nothing seems to be wrong beyond the void that exists where familial love and affection can be.

All he is thankful for is that he doesn’t have to articulate it to Sebastian, who knows and fills the shoes of both a mother and a father as if he had been placed on that world for such a role. 

Sometimes, he thinks he sees a smile out of his parents. Not with each other, never with each other - when they so much as pass by in the halls, all the light drains out of their faces, replaced instead with a bitterness that makes them look decades older than they actually are. 

Mostly, his father smiles at the newest maid. The pretty one with the long hair and the scarred ears, whose smile is sweet but nervous - as if she has a secret that begs to be freed. When she begins work, a chance happens. Suddenly, his father is not quiet so dull-eyed. Once or twice the man picks him up and swings him around, laughing and ruffling his hair as if they are the father and son that populate his picture books - it brings him hope, it makes  _him_ smile and there’s a warmth that isn’t there before. The maid is sweetly kind and gives him candy when no one looks, and he catches himself wishing that  _she_  had been his mother instead of the cold woman that sits alone in the parlor. 

He doesn’t like it when he thinks that. Nor does he like the spike of jealousy that comes when he hears the young woman mention that she’s going to be a mother, he doesn’t like the swell of jealousy that makes him tremble and fall short of breath.

(He realizes in adulthood that to want something is to open yourself to the disappointment when it doesn’t happen)

Of course, he doesn’t have to think about it for very long. One day he’s awoken from his sleep by the same old, same old. Voices raised in whisper-yells, sharp words - he catches his name, once or twice, but it’s lost as they walk away.

The maid is no longer there.

(He hears the rest of the staff talking about the weight she’d gained, the audacity of it, how his Father had disgraced the family by slumming it with one of  _them_  but he’s just six and half-elves are still creatures of shadow that exist in the mythical world beyond the gates of his family home.)

After that, his father doesn’t smile any more. His mother seems smug, and when  _she_  smiles he only feels cold through his bones.

The misery returns. The light goes out. No one speaks, the silence reins until one warm Sunday.

The men from the church come and  _they_  yell in raised voices. The pope is a short man, but he makes everyone around him feel small with his words and his loud, booming voice. Zelos watches from the stairs as they accuse him of sins against the church, against nature, and he watches as his father breaks.

(He knows later that his father had never loved that girl, that he was using her and her warmth to allow himself the illusion of happiness. He never intended to leave his mother, as one of the older maids gravely tells him that she heard him promise, he was simply stringing her along for his own gain.

Zelos knows he has the same capacity to hurt, so he learns from his father’s mistakes and spreads his lies to everyone so that they can hurt no one.)

A few days later, someone yells “Don’t let Master Zelos see!” and of course he goes, for he is seven and a messiah for the masses and it would be improper for a Chosen to turn away from suffering in the world.

(He remembers believing that and remembers how he had felt so

_proud_

to be the Chosen, and how he had wanted to help people and ease their suffering. It makes him laugh now, thinking that he had any real impact on anyone’s life, how he had thought that he could change the world through both his life and his death.

How he had thought that all seven year old boys knew exactly when and how they would die and that it was so  _normal_ to lack attachments in your life because of it.)

It’s a decision he regrets almost as much as playing in the snow.

He only sees the shadow of the body, suspended from the chandelier. Just a shadow before Sebastian is scooping him up and tilting his face into his shoulder, striding out of their home and into the warm spring without a backwards glance.

At seven he knows what suicide is, because it’s a concern that they have for the Chosen. He knows a lot about death, and the finality of it - even if at the time, it’s gently wrapped up in a easy to swallow pill with lies about Heaven and the Goddess Martel’s warm embrace. At seven, he stands stone-faced before his father’s grave and feels the lack of pity from his mother.

She is still chained to him, even in death. Her hands are on his shoulders and her sharp nails bite into the skin, but he says nothing and she says nothing and together they stand vigil over the grave.

(When she, too, dies - he’s not kind enough to bury her away from the rest. No, Zelos has her placed in the ground next to him because he is ten and he’s been told that’s how it should be.)

He only sees the made as they turn to leave, and he doesn’t recognize her when he does. Not at first. The happiness and warmth is gone, replaced with the cold, hard expressions that everyone that comes in contact with his family wears.

(He only wishes then that he’d been strong and wise enough to give them both everything, for the Wilders had robbed them blind of wealth and love and left them with nothing.)


	3. Abandoned

In his heart he knew that it was selfish to become attached to anyone in this world. To connect with them was to form a bond that would only scar when they were ripped apart. Zelos is taught from the day he is born that the life of a Chosen is one of distance and quiet suffering, so as not to unsettle the populace. He is taught to be at arms length at all times from anyone who would want him, for they could kill him, or worse, they could become attached.

It was selfish to kneel down with her in the dirt and help her build sand castles out of mud, for they would never see the beach. He sings her songs and twirls her around, shares secrets with her and laughs and laughs and  _laughs_  and it’s a sound so foreign to the walls of the grand Wilder estate that the servants are frightened by it.

It was selfish to hold her hand as they walked the family grounds, it was selfish to braid a crown of the prettiest flowers and place it on her head. It was incomprehensibly cruel to kiss bruises and bandage scraped knees with a smile.

The worst thing he ever did was allow her to be close, for the Chosen is naught but a vortex of suffering - a being that exists to take with them the sins of mankind to the goddess so that the world can be born anew with her love.

He fights for her freedom but in the end he loses the battle, unable to face her - unable to step out of his room to soothe her sobs, because he’s not worthy. He hopes that pain galvanizes into hared, he hopes that eases the pain and brings about a sense of peace when the Goddess takes him.

She’s screaming in the hallway, crying his name. Begging the guards to say a goodbye, but he won’t open the door. Zelos leans against it and bites his hand, swallows thickly and pretends that he is already hollow.

And in doing so he abandons her in all but his heart.


	4. Bitter

She hides it so much better than he does.

It doesn’t take long to be in Colette’s presence for him to pick up on her secrets. She giggles when she lies - white lies, harmless lies, she shields them from her suffering because she loves them. Everything about this girl exudes love and charm, she’s enchanting and warm and  _alive_  in ways Zelos can’t even comprehend.

He wonders how much of that is a facade. 

Still, she has what he doesn’t - in all the ways that he did. A father who won’t look her in the eye, who seems uncomfortable to have something… inhuman in his house. A grandmother who refers to her only as  _Chosen_ , and a smile that says she knows that the world only loves her out of obligation, out of hope that should things change, her death will save them from suffering.

Yet she loves the world. There is no ironic note to her voice as she talks about her favorite places, or the people she’s met in her short life that have made a great impact on the way she views the world. 

He loves and envies her for it.

And in his selfish, blackened heart, he wishes that she were in his place.


	5. Delirious

He heard that in some sects of the church, men deprive themselves of food, sensation, and sleep in order to better hear the voice of the Goddess. It sounds like a load of rubbish to him, it sounds like a means to get yourself killed - but they do it, and in their delirium they praise Martel.

He develops a fever a little before his twentieth birthday. Sheena is his “date” to the Chosen ball, as she has been for the best seven years - whether she enjoys it or not, he doesn’t know, but somehow he always gets his way and she accepts the extravagant dresses that he buys her.

(He laughs when her regular sizes are too small, too tight in the chest - teases her about her measurements and accepts the seals she throws at his face because it’s  _worth it_  to see her so flustered about s omething most noble women would kill for, it reminds him that she’s her and there’s nothing fake about her except the stiff smile she gets when the subject of Mizuho or the Summon Spirits are brought up.)

He tells himself the show must go on as he dresses, carefully plaiting his long hair with shaky fingers, and shakes off the nausea with a reminder that if he misses this then the people will panic and he doesn’t want to deal with rumors that the Chosen is an even bigger failure than they already suspect. 

(The Oracle four years  _late_  and he hopes that this year, while the celebration rages on, he’ll turn to the skyline and finally see it)

He doesn’t eat, in fear of vomiting it up. He doesn’t sleep, because the second he tries he feels nothing but the sway of the world. He doesn’t feel, because right now everything just feels  _gross_  and he wants to sleep. Instead he takes Sheena’s arm when she reluctantly offers it and they walk, step in step, into the grand hall. The dazzling lights are enough to throw him off balance, but he plays it off as a grab for her ass.

She doesn’t strike him in public because it’s  _illegal_  and instead stomps on his foot with a spiked heal as they dance, playing it off an an accident. Any who notice merely giggle at the “clusminess” of what they perceive to be another one of the Chosen’s bimbo girlfriends

(they forget that Sheena has been here  _every year_  that he’s introduced her to them  _every year_  but that’s fine to him because they don’t deserve to know her, he doesn’t deserve to know her, but he selfishly keeps her close because that’s all he’s good at)

and turn their attention away, only shyly looking back in hopes that an opportunity may present itself for him to dance with them.

By the end of the night everything is spinning. He sits and sips at the punch, resting his flushed face in his hands and tries to remember why he bothered keeping up appearances when he hates  _all of them_  and they already have no faith (he has no faith, none at all) in him, 

He must fall asleep like that, because the next thing he knows someone is shaking his shoulder gently. He lifts his head, struggles to focus his eyes.

An angel stands before him, framed by a glow warm as the sun.

He embraces it without a second thought.

"Zelos, h-hey, what do you think you’re doing!?" The Angel protests, but he’s had enough of being ignored for one lifetime. She just freezes as he buries his face in her shoulder.

"Don’t go," he mutters, tightening his grip ever so gently. "I’ve been waiting for you my whole life, just… please."

Whatever happens after that he’s not sure. He wakes up in his bed at home, sick, shaky, and weak as a newborn kitten, with a smarting cheek to top it all off. Sebastian tells him that Sheena brought him home (“She seemed quite worried, sir, and very apologetic.”) and gives him some broth and a warm water bottle and stays until he falls asleep.

They don’t talk about it afterwards, it’s a subject that never comes up again. He doesn’t thank her for covering for him, she doesn’t yell at him for besmirching her reputation. He gets the full story from other people at the party - he ended up with his face in his date’s breasts, she’d struck him, suddenly stopped and they left. The “gentlemen” elbow him and press for details, and the ladies scoff at how he could slum with a woman of such “loose morals”

(He hates them all and if that tower never shows up in Seles’ lifetime than that’s fine by him, he’ll take their steadily building scorn if it means that his sister will never have to face the chance of going on that journey

he only realizes as he’s laughing at an air-headed comment that he wants it for  _her_  because she deserves to regain her reputation, and what better way to do that than to regenerate the world )

and bid for him to take them out tonight instead.

He doesn’t.

Instead he attends a sermon, forgoes sleep, forgoes food, and prays all day long that the next year will bring what he hopes for, that when that day comes she’ll be by his side, and as he falls asleep in the early hours of the morning he thinks he hears the Goddess herself scold him for his carelessness.


	6. Determined

"You’ve gotta be kidding me."

The party exchanges uneasy glances. The gnomelette did not, in fact, appear to be kidding. If they wanted into the Temple of the Earth, they were required to make a sacrifice.

And that sacrifice was “something spicy”.

"This is totally nuts. No way,  _no way._ Just let us through so we can go wake up your… parent?” Zelos can’t even remember the last time he ate (probably before the Shadow temple, come to think of it - maybe after? ) “Sheena, this is your thing. Tell this little creep we don’t have time for this.”

But the gnomelette was not to be budged. Nobody makes a move to volunteer - it’s between him, Yuan, Regal, and Sheena… Presea could possibly do it, but the girl is “blessed” by the angels and so he can’t trust that she won’t just smash the pan over the Gnomlette’s head and be done with it. By some miracle, he recovers his wits first.

"This? This right here? This is why Chosen fail. Fine, okay - look, I’ll do it," Zelos holds up his hands in defeat. 

"Have you ever even cooked before?" Sheena shoots at him, to which he only offers an airy chuckle.

“ _Please_ , I’m nobility. I have people to do that for me!” Even if that wasn’t true, not really, not after that incident so many years ago. He prepares most of his own meals - even before his desire for food went away, he’d cook up a little something if he hadn’t seen dinner being prepared with his own eyes.

You could never be too careful.

It’s halfway through preparing the meal that he realizes a fundamental error in his judgement - cooking without being able to taste was a dumb idea, but there’s no turning back now.

He finishes, wipes the sweat from his brow and hides the fact that he’s out of breath. “There, you little twerp,” he snaps, slamming the plate down in front of him. “ _Something spicy_. Now can we go?”

To his utter surprise, the thing devours everything in one bite.

Even the plate.

"So that’s spice…"


	7. Sorry

”- we’re going  _right by_  Altimira. You can’t tell me you don’t want to go there. Come  _on._ I’m the Chosen, right? Don’t I get a say on how we steer this ship.  _Gift from the Goddess,_  remember?”

Regal looks unimpressed (he guesses that he would be pretty bored with vacationing at his own business, if he were him) and Yuan looks like he’d much rather strangle small animals than to endure anything related to the tourist trap. Presea’s reaction barely counts. Genis is bouncing on his heels, Sheena looks like she’s barely containing her own excitement, and Raine is…

Well.

He’s not going to address that all too knowing look.

They have one seal left to go. Just one. One more to go and it would all be over, and here he is. Trying to prolong the journey, to avoid the inevitable, to create a handful of good memories before he’s just a blank slate.

"I suppose it’s on the way," Raine says carefully, pushing her glasses up her nose and trying to hide her smile as Genis woops loudly and punches the air.

Turns out the kid can be pretty cute when he’s not shooting his mouth off.

They make plans for swimming, for dancing, Genis advocates for smores and Sheena tosses her vote in with him. It’s a hell of a detour, but the world has been in decline for so long that it doesn’t really matter, and the Desians are a threat but they’re used to that too and a little fun never hurt anyone.

He gets good at acting like he feels when Sheena slaps him. They splash around in the water, he tans on the beach (and gets sunburned but it’s not like it  _bothers_  him) and they laugh well into the night.

Raine approaches him long after the others have gone to sleep, settles down next to him and together they watch the stars.

"This was pretty selfish, huh," he says finally, his eyes tracing the lines of the constellations. "This, taking time away from the journey. Might as well get it over with."

Raine is quiet for a moment, draws her knees up to her chest. “The thing about memories, Zelos, is that they go both ways… in taking the time for this, you’ve given yourself one last good memory. And one more to be remembered by.”

"Yeah," he says, running his hand through his hair as he lays back against the still warm sands, remembering that in just days they would be faced with an icy tundra that would mark the site of the second last seal. "That’s why it was selfish."


	8. Devastated

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings for panic attacks, ptsd, and suicidal thoughts.

_( The rumors said that Mylene Wilder was engaged to another man, that she was ready to be wed to a nobleman from Sybak whom she’d loved since she was a girl._

_They say that after being together for a few years, there was a strong possibility of divorce if the Chosen and his young bride-to-be failed to yield a child._

_They say that not a single woman before or since has announced her pregnancy to the world with such a heartbroken look upon her face. )_

 

They’re barely on the Flanoir continent for an hour when he feels like it’s too much.

Zelos is twenty-three and shaking a the sight of snowfall. He thinks he might be sick, but there’s nothing to throw up. He thinks he might pass out, but he knows he’s infuriatingly conscious all the time. He thinks that he might take off, but the mission is too important to break step with the others.

Instead he wraps his arms around himself and pretends to feel the cold, complains loudly and bellyaches the whole while as if nothing’s wrong. In the end it’s too much and all he can do is shut his eyes and listen to the idle banter ahead of him, trying to stop his thoughts from turning inward.

( _His mother has a kind smile but it’s as hollow as the rest of her._

_His mother hates the sound of his voice, the look of his face, the shade of his hair. Sometimes she threads her fingers through the wavy locks and murmurs something under her breath he can’t hear - he thinks that it begins with, “If you were my son,” and ends with, “this would be different.”_

_He doesn’t remember enough of his father to say for sure if he was the same way, but sometimes if she shuts his eyes tight before sleep he dreams of a man with striking red hair, a man with a slimey, untrustworthy smile - a man who had never lacked for anything and would never lack for anything. He remembers his father as he really was, not through the haze of nostalgia, for there’s only a handful of memories he has that he doesn’t immediately associate with )_

"Stop it!"

The others stop, turning to face him in confusion. Zelos’ smile is brittle and wavering, he plays it off as nothing and complains instead of how it would be  _so much easier_  if they’d just taken the boats, whines and wheedles and they carry on with varying amounts of frustration and annoyance.

He’s fine.

It’s fine.

It’s fine until they run into the monsters. He’s breathing hard but he’s  _fine_ , it’s just snow, it’s nothing. It’s no big deal, the past is the past. It doesn’t matter at all.

The monsters are weak. They’re not a challenge. Genis blasts them apart with magic and he’s  _fine_  he’s fine until his eyes catch the spray of blood and how it dyes everything a brilliant shade of scarlet.

The snow is red.

_ _

_( His mother’s smile is hollow and her eyes are endless and her white teeth are red_

_his face his hot_

_he’s hot_

_he’s burning up._

_Her smile is gruesome and her eyes are filled with more life than he’s ever seen_

_her smile is gruesome and her eyes are filled with hate_

_loathing_

_hate_

_she hates him and he knows it and he loves her he’s sorry he’s sorry he’s sorry_

**_you should never have been born_ ** _  
_

_i know i know it would have been better off for everyone if never_

_i’m sorry_

_i’m sorry i’m sorry i’m sorry i’m so sorry_

_everything tastes thick and his mother’s body is heavy and he can’t breathe, can’t move, can’t think all he can do is lay there and_

_stay_

_still_

_and her words and blood seep into him and he feels it for days_

_months_

_years_

_decades_

_afterwards )_

Raine approaches and he nearly takes her head off in his rush to get away from her, from Genis, from Yuan. He doesn’t want to be around any of them, not one. Sheena starts to approach and he catches himself, stiffens his shoulders and tries to

_( hide it )_

pull it together so he won’t have to put up with

_( her questions, her concerns, her being around him and giving him so much more than he wants he hates it hates her hates pity this journey everything everything everything )_

any more delays on this trip.

He hides it by downing a pancea bottle, blames it on confusion, blames the shaking of his hands and the paleness of his face to the cold and doesn’t

 _( definitely doesn’t his voice isn’t high and there’s no threat of losing that tenuous control in a way he hasn’t since his boyhood when the snow came again and sebastian found him_ )

beg for them to just hurry up so they can be in Flanoir by nightfall.

When they get to the hotel he locks himself in his room and lets it out bit by bit, sits in the middle of the floor and reconstructs himself as he has so many times before.

His mask is slipping. Zelos realizes he’s struggling to hold it together with each seal released - the contempt towards the world, the contempt towards himself, towards everyone around him.

Thank God the journey is almost over.


	9. Fading to Dust: Mithos

 

The rest of them are in tears.

Zelos hears Colette sniffle and sees Lloyd wipe his eyes with the back of his hand. He hears Sheena’s quiet, trembling sigh and sees the way Regal sets his jaw. How Presea can’t look ahead, how Genis’ knees give way, how Raine looks regretful.

In contrast, he wears a smile.

How could he feel pity for the man who had created the world who had caused so much suffering? How could he shed tears, when there were still bruises healing underneath his shirt - when  _threat_  of all the things he could do to Seles still rang in his ears? 

He didn’t mourn. In all truth, he was  _glad_. There was no way he would ever rest easy, knowing that Mithos Yggdrasill still walked the Earth. Knowing that a monster of that magnitude could still exist, knowing all that he had, enduring all that he had - he’d probably have killed him himself.

Lloyd springs into action to save the worlds, and Zelos simply lifts a hand to shield his eyes.

It’s a new beginning.


	10. Fading to Dust: Colette

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Death Prompts.

 

It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.

It wasn’t supposed to  _happen._

It happens too fast for him to react to, too fast for him to even process. One minute, he’s preparing to accept Yggdrasill’s final judgement - the next, her blood is on his face and her body is in his arms.

His first thought is that he should have been the one to die.

His second is that, selfishly, there is now no one to take Yggdrasill’s eyes off of Seles.

The third is that he must truly be a deplorable person to be thinking about anyone other than the girl dying in his arms. 

Yggdrasill’s reaction is nothing short of a tantrum. His attention is off of the both of them - screaming and ranting in a way that Zelos can only attribute to madness, a child who has had their new favorite toy broken by their own clumsiness. He shifts Colette in his arms, looks at the wound - huge, deep, gaping, a chasm across her small frame - and knows there’s not a god damn thing he can do.

His hands shake as he tries, calling forth the magic as loudly as he dares with an unpredictable madman screaming not ten feet away. It would take all he had to heal a broken bone, let alone something like this.

Her hand touching his face breaks his concentration.

"I’m glad," she whispers, feather soft, saying the words he’d always hoped to hear but in all the wrong ways, "that you’re alive."

Her last smile breaks his heart.

From across the room he hears Lloyd scream her name. His knees give way, his arms threaten to drop her - but he holds fast.


	11. Fading to Dust: Sheena

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Death prompts.

He had thought that, with all of the times that he had seen death in his life, he would be numb to it by now. Where a normal human reaction to loss would be there would just be acceptance, an acknowledgement that this was an aspect of his life that would be inescapable as long as he breathed.

But he was wrong.

He could lose his mother and father. He could cut down countless Desian lives. He could watch people - good people - in human ranches toil and suffer and scarcely bat an eye.

And yet here he was, screaming her name as if it would make any difference.

Zelos doesn’t even remember striking the final blow to his opponent, only that that person was 

_(also dead)_

no longer an issue and he was running towards her. Everything outside of her blurs and blackens, he just  _sees her_ and the smell of her blood is all that he can pick up on, all that he can feel as he presses his hands to the wound. 

Kuchinawa is dead. He doesn’t remember doing that, only he’s certain that he did because that’s his dagger stuck in the ninja’s head. 

"First Aid!" It’s a weak spell, meant for cuts and bruises. A weak spell that does nothing but absolve the pain, that lessens the guilt as he feels her life slipping through his shaking fingers. "First aid! First aid!" 

Somehow, he’d believed her to be above death. She’d cheated it so many times, he’d watched her dance deftly out of death’s bony grasp and turn far more dire fights around. He’d believed… that she must be something more, something better than the people around him, bound by mortality and corrupted by the morality of their broken world.

But it’s foolish to believe that a person is any more than a person.

She goes cold before he runs out of mana. By the time the others arrive, he’s exhausted himself. Raine pushes him aside to take over, only to turn away at the realization that she was far, far too late.

He loses his composure instantly. His bloody gloves leave handprints on the front of her clothing, he hauls her up - yells in her face, demands something  _better, because she can’t die like this_.

But she has.


	12. Bad End: Awaken, Beast

 

He isn’t sure he’s made the right decision until he hears the accusation fall from her lips. It was meant to be a ploy, a distraction - the only way he could possibly get close enough to Cruxis in order to get the intel that they needed. It was  _supposed_ to end when he has the Eternal Sword in hand… if they were in this crazy plan, then they were in this together.

_You never- you never wanted to help us at all! You were just looking to swap places with Colette!_

Her words hit like a physical blow. He stops at the transporter, turns - incredulously staring. The comments come in a wave -  _we should never have trusted you_ ,  _you were just using us._ Each somehow hurts more than the last. _  
_

But the worst is the look on her face.

The look that says he is worse than the scum under her boot.

"… That’s right."

Zelos steps away from the platform completely.

"That’s right. I was just using all of you all along. Haha! You totally fell for it. I’ve been playing you this  _whole_ time and you had no idea.”

He thinks about Seles, and how at least this way he upheld this end of the bargain. Tethe’alla was already flourishing, there was no way Cruxis could use her for their plans. She would no longer be their bargaining chip.

He thinks about Colette, and how sorry he is that he won’t swoop in there to rescue her. The role of the hero had never suited him, had it? He was just a puppet on strings, dancing beautifully but always at the behest of another. They’ll save her, they’ll rush in there and save the day and this whole crazy plan will be just fine.

It never needed him in the first place.

"And how  _stupid_ do you look right now, huh? Do you think I cared about any of you? It’s always been her or me, and somebody’s got to look at for me. It’s not like any of you ever gave a  _damn_  about what happened to me, so long as your ideals are in tact. I can’t believe you thought you could change the world. How naive can you be?”

He laughs, loud and hollow. It feels good, like ripping a bandaid off. They never cared, they never wanted anything to do with him - he was just a backup, always a backup. The useless one, the wheel with the cracked spokes. All they had to do was wait for it to fall apart, it didn’t  _matter_  they had a better one on hand.

No one wanted to deal with someone who just darkened the lives of everyone they came in contact with.

"It’s just as well. I never actually  _cared_  about any of you either.”

They draw their weapons before he draws his. It’s fine. Zelos feels perfectly empty as he summons his wings and prepares to fight.


End file.
